Rocker arms for the valve drive of internal combustion piston engines were generally made in the past as castings and provided with a roller mounted on a rolling bearing to reduce friction at the point of contact of the cam on the rocker arm. This structure has also been used in making finger levers out of sheet metal by cold forming without chip removal. However, problems have been encountered in such sheet metal finger levers which are relatively thin-walled, and therefore lighter and more economical than cast finger levers, because it was not possible to design them with an adequate rigidity.
A cold-formed finger lever of the generic type described above is known from DE-A 39 29 486. To rigidify this sheet metal finger lever, outwards projecting ribs are arranged on the side walls below the location of the pin. It has been determined on the one hand that these ribs do not stiffen the finger lever sufficiently and, on the other hand, said ribs increase the width of the finger lever. But since, precisely in multi-valve cylinder units only a small space is available for the finger levers arranged next to each other, the finger levers cannot be provided with such ribs.